Flaw of the Iris
by Cairnsy
Summary: Fai’s eyesight has never been better. Spoilers up to chapter 124.


_Spoilers_ For the entire manga, including and up to chapter 124. Currently gen, but if I do end up doing a companion piece to this, it will have slashy overtures. So, pre-slash, I suppose?

_Notes_ I've wanted to use this as a title for a fic for years, but nothing I've ever written has ever fitted it. The latest chapters have made me gleeful for many reasons, and I must admit that being able to finally use this title is one of them. Such a weird, nerdy fangirl!

**Flaw of the Iris.**

Run, run, run. Breathe occasionally, just to remember you're alive, before the continuous, never ending beat of fast falling footsteps becomes your mantra again. It stops being so hard after awhile, becoming instead things such as monotonous and easy and cowardly, but at least it's not so hard. You think you even may enjoy it, in a sadistic fashion that doesn't mind that your lungs are heaving so heavily you can no longer hear your own heartbeat, although that could be for a different reason, a totally different reason. It's not a reason you address, not when you could run, run, run instead.

_Breathe._ A strange world with stranger people as companions. The tall one drenched in black with a soul shining so brightly white that you're afraid of him. The young ones who sparkle tarnished innocence, not white like the tall one but hues of pink that are becoming a darker red with each passing moment. The witch, whose eyes pierce and leave imprints of purple deep behind Fai's own.

Run, run, run. Away from the magic that tied you through your dreams to a beast of the wind, away from the pretty, pretty girl who tried to entrap you with her own magical music. Even music isn't sacred, so easily twisted and manipulated with the right spells or turns or words. You feel it crushing in around you, too close, too close. It's not the same magic you flee, but all magic has its base in the same pool of enchantment. If you wait for too long, stop running, running, running for just a moment, then a tendril of _that_ magic might find its way into whatever world holds you hostage at the time.

_Breathe_. The snow is not like it is back _there_, and is instead white and pure and welcoming. You shouldn't be seduced by it, but there is something about the crispness in the air and the burning red heat in the child's eyes when the girl goes missing that melts you just the slightest in a way that the warmth in the other worlds did not. You even forget, just for a moment when the water is rising and there are things such as others lives at stake, that the castle itself is a trap for all things magical. But only for a moment.

Run, run, run. Before the snow stops being welcoming and starts reminding you of the numbness that it used to bring, before that pool of water that engulfs the castle reveals a casket at its greatest depths. You run because you're terrified and that's the best way to be, because if you're not terrified then you're dead, and you will not go alone. _He_ will not let you go alone. Whatever world _he_ finds you on, it is sure to suffer the same fate that you will. _They_ will suffer the same fate as you will.

And … it's strange, because you've never quite thought about it in that way before.

_Breathe_. You're starting to actually enjoy the red that flushes the other man's face when he's angry and the pale white of clenched fists when he's desperately trying not to hit something in retaliation to the comment you just made. You're separated from the other two again, but this world is rather nice in an antique way that the Black one of course says feels almost like home. Dark buildings and steeply slopped roofs that arch for the heavens yet still find their base on the ground are very much him, and you think perhaps this world isn't quite so-

Runrunrunrunrun. You prefer to run physically, but you have no problem with the emotional kind either. You're trapped, Blacky is trapped, and it's not _him_, it's not _him_, but his eyes hold you like they always did and you can feel your sanity slipping finely through his fingers, just like it always did. And there is magic everywhere, and so _he_ is everywhere, and while the eyes are set in a stone statue that _he_ has surely never laid eyes on, those eyes are _his_ and he has seen you.

And you are lost.

_Breathe._ And you are found. It's a nice world, a fun world. One where you can relax a little because there is something just a little different about the magic here that doesn't frighten you quite so much, and with sane (ish), stable (ish) Kurogane being very much Kurogane (ish), and the boy and Sakura having so much fun, you find it difficult not to enjoy it all a little, yourself. It's a place where you can do a little mending, and while you need more than a few patches and stitches to cover the gaping holes that are in part your own making, you're finding that light laughter and angry, all knowing glares are helping more than you ever thought they could.

For the first time, you stop thinking of your travelling companions in colours and start thinking of them in emotions.

Run, run, run. Not because it's habit, not because it's safe, not because it doesn't feel quite so much like running anymore but more a brisk jog, one that isn't so fast that it leaves all behind, but still with enough pace that only those with true dedication keep up. You're not running because it's what you've always done, and you're not running because you're slowly growing out of being a coward – it's in fact the opposite.

You're running still because you don't know quite where your end is supposed to be, and you're too afraid to find out.

_Breathe._ The people in this world have good intentions, you can tell that the moment they point their weapons at you. But there are few things more deadly than good intentions, and you wonder if they know that perhaps in this sandy, desert of a place that perhaps theirs are wrong and the other groups are right. They might not be, of course, but it's a dangerous, dangerous thing to assume that you are completely in the right, because when it all goes wrong and you realise how horribly wrong you really are, all that is left for you to do is run.

It seems like a nice enough world, even with all its flaws. It's why you're not surprised when everything goes to hell. What you're not expecting is your own personal hell, and as the water swirls in a pattern that is etched always on your thoughts, and as you swear that through the magic rift waves that you can see an echo of a casket at the bottom of the pool, you run.

You run, but not in the direction you usually do.

It doesn't last long, you hardly expected it to. When it is all over and consciousness is finally, blessedly ripped from you in the same way screams of burnt pain had been moments before, you find you don't regret it. You regret it a little when you slowly find the world reappearing through a haze of pain, but you like to think that will fade when the pain does as well. You're in the same world as before, but for you it seems like a new one, one where you exist only so that a searing fire has an outlet which to burn and burn up all oxygen that might make things such as breathing possible. It hurts, by the gods it hurts, and yet …

You've found the end to which you've unknowingly been running towards all this time, and it feels like, it feels like …

It feels like warmth.

You've always before lived in a world of ice.

"If I continue to live... Syaoran-kun's magic will also live." You have to force the words out, and it takes a moment before Kurogane seems to realise exactly what you're saying. He's going to hit you, you just know it, but then your back on the bed and the world is spinning more than ever before.

You've stopped running, you've found a place to _stay_.

It looks like, however, that Kurogane is about to start running himself.


End file.
